Andrew Tuttle
Fleeting Adventure
(Basin Rock)
★★★★

AS AN instrument the banjo comes with a lot of baggage. However, Andrew Tuttle has been doing a sterling job unmooring it from its stereotypical image of the Duelling Banjos scene in the movie Deliverance.

On Fleeting Adventure, like his brilliant 2020 longplayer Alexandra, the Brisbane-based artist creates expansive instrumental soundscapes, with his superb banjo work supported by a host of talented friends.

Steve Gunn contributes electric guitar to the astonishing and epic Overnight’s A Weekend, while the pedal steel guitar on Next Week, Pending brings to mind the work of US guitarist William Tyler.

Inspired by the localised excursions forced on us by lockdowns – Tuttle recounts how a half hour drive to pick up an online order in 2020 was furthest he had travelled in months – his fifth record is a spaciously beautiful set that rewards close listening.

Julia Jacklin
Pre Pleasure
(Polyvinyl)
★★★★

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WE are living in a golden age of female indie rock singer-songwriters, with Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus in the US, Canada’s The Weather Station and Angie McMahon and Courtney Barnett from down under all shining brightly.

Julia Jacklin’s first two records put her firmly alongside these brilliant artists, and Pre Pleasure is perhaps the Australian musician’s best yet.

It doesn’t sound as personally raw as her 2019 album Crushing, though it’s still deeply introspective, with romantic matters coursing through the songs. “I’ve been thinking back/To when things went off track,” is one simple but affecting couplet from Ignore Tenderness.

Recorded in Montreal with string arrangements by Owen Pallett, Jacklin apparently wrote most of the songs on keyboards rather than guitar – the stunning Love, Try Not To Let Go one outcome of this artistic shift, I’m guessing.

Gretchen Peters
The Show: Live from the UK
(Proper Records)
★★★

NOW 64 years old, Gretchen Peters has had a long career in Nashville, her songs covered by chart-topping artists including Faith Hill, Trisha Yearwood and Bryan Adams.

Championed by Radio 2, her new double CD album is a record of her recent tour of the UK, playing with her band and a small string section.

While her accessible country and folk music may be a little too mainstream and, er, American for some, the quality of her storytelling is undeniable.

Like her contemporaries Beth Neilsen Chapman and Mary Chapin Carpenter, Peters writes emotionally compelling women-centred vignettes about life in Middle America – check out Five Minutes and the familial drama of Idlewild.

A classic of the genre, her signature song, the sublime On A Bus To St Cloud, has aged gracefully since she recorded the studio version over 25 years ago.